Do you hate Diwali? Are you a geek? Read this, our cool list of the five must-haves for every Diwali-hating misanthropic tech-lover:

1. Noise-cancelling headphones

Like, this is obvious. When Aaryyamann from the neighbouring flat decides to drop a 200-decibel bomb from a 4th floor balcony that manages to create a crater in the concrete below, you don’t want to be listening. When the extra friendly neighbour comes around with a box of limp kaju katlis and demands to know why you haven’t decorated the house with fake electric diyas, you’d rather ignore the doorbell. When enthu friends want to come over with a pack of cards (you still don’t know which is a spade and which is that other clover-leaf kinda thing) and a bottle of Old Monk because “arre Diwali pe to cards banta hai,” you can safely avoid their calls because you didn’t hear it ring. Noise-cancelling headphones will also allow you to watch Stranger Things for the sixth time if you’d frankly rather be captured by the Demogorgon than listen to Chittiya kalaiyan ve blaring from the loudspeakers at the Diwali mela next door for the 100th time that day.

Get it here.

2. Air purifier

If you live in Delhi, and don’t already have half a dozen air purifiers at home, you must have developed iron lungs already, in which case you can skip this. If you live in Delhi and have as many air purifiers at home as there are humans (and one for the dog), you may skip this. But for the rest of us who don’t want to breathe in sulphurous air laden with toxic heavy metals for two weeks around this joyous time of the year — I mean, think about it, if we didn’t voluntarily do this to ourselves in the name of tradition, we would quickly form human chains and start candlelight marches against it — sitting very, very close to an air purifier and breathing only in short, quick bursts is the only solution. Actually, just try not to breathe too much.

Oh, and tell me this: why are there no scary WhatsApp messages about this when health warnings that alert you to the ill-effects of everything from eating shrimp and Vitamin C together (it will create arsenic in your tummy that will kill you INSTANTLY and painfully) to not washing your bra every day (breast cancer; no truly, the Bra Hygiene Committee is watching) are all over the place?

Get it here.

3. Vogmask

It obviously makes sense to stay indoors during this joyous time, but in case you have to step out — you know, for emergencies such as treating stray burns — you may want to use these cool masks that double up as fashion accessories. Granted, you may look a bit Darth Vader-ish, but that’s actually good because you can walk up to the neighbourhood brats bursting strings of crackers and scare the bejeesus out of them by doing the whole “I am your father” routine.

Get it here.

4. VR headset

This is for the times when you just cannot stand the world around you and even watching Stranger Things with noise-cancelling headphones on doesn’t work. You know, when in the dead of night your neighbour, who has been partying elsewhere, decides to come back home at 2am and starts bursting his entire stash of crackers in one go. When the world just seems like a bleak, dark place and you start questioning the meaning of existence and ponder over the fruitlessless of human evolution. Slip on your VR headset and disappear into your chosen fantasy realm, be it Deep Space Battle or Ultimate Bike Ride or — wow! — Tuscany Dive.

Get it here.

5. Bottled oxygen

This will actually come in handy in the days following Diwali, when the smog settles nicely and you draw in about 300 ppm of carbon monoxide with each breath and curse the day you decided to quit smoking because what was the use of that, exactly? Open the bottle, sniff in some pure alpine air, and try not to pass out from its sheer purity, which your lungs are clearly unused to.

Get it here.

Happy Anti-Diwali!

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